


Time and Time Again

by justanothersong



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Different time periods, Ethnic slurs, Eventual Happy Ending, HIV/AIDS, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Jewish Bucky Barnes, M/M, Past Character Death, Past Lives, Period-Typical Homophobia, Prison, Reincarnation, Slurs, Temporary Character Death, Vietnam War, World War I
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-01-20 15:09:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18527578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanothersong/pseuds/justanothersong
Summary: We’ll be home again someday.Five words written in a letter between soldiers becomes a bound promise between two souls, destined to reunite over and over again until time and circumstance allow it to be kept.





	1. Chapter 1

_Their eyes met over the table, two different shades of blue lit by flickering candlelight, widening as a rush of warm air filled the small room and the little witch smiled softly._

_“Oh,” she said in a small, pleased voice. “It’s all coming back.”_

~

Steven wouldn’t cry; he _couldn’t_ cry. He was as chilled and soaked to the bone as the other men in the trench and they refused even to sniffle; he wouldn’t succumb either. It had been eight days since he’d gotten the news: the 107th Infantry Regiment had been decimated in the Somme. There were only a handful of survivors, men that Steven knew by name.

James was not on that list.

It was Simmons who told him, one of the only few who made it out. Steven had been in London -- it seemed so much longer than eight days ago -- when Simmons marched up, bearing the frightful hollow-eyed look that so many soldiers carried. He was on a crutch, his left leg gone from just above the knee, and his step stuttered and wobbled but the grim determination on his face made it clear he refused to take to a wheelchair.

Simmons sidled up beside him at the bar, and Steven couldn’t help but offer a hopeful smile.

“You boys back from France already?” he offered, glancing around the bar for any more familiar faces. “Beatin’ back the Kaiser before I get my chance?”

Simmons grunted, signaling the bartender, and downed a double shot of whiskey before he spoke.

“Gone,” he croaked, then cleared his throat. “They’re all gone,” he spoke again. He reached into his jacket and retrieved a dirty envelope, spattered with what Steven tried to pretend was only mud, but he knew better. He hated that he did, but he knew better.

“Promised Sarge, if I made it, if I made it back before you shipped to the continent,” Simmons grunted, and held the letter out. “He was a good man. Finest I ever…” His voice broke, and his eyes dropped to the floor.

“I don’t…” Steven began.

“Just take it!” Simmons barked, shoulders slumping after the brief display of gruffness. He sighed. “Sarge was a good man. Never been my way, to stick my nose in where it don’t belong. He says it’s important, it’s important. I shouldn’t have read it. Wasn’t mine to see.”

Steven took the letter from Simmons’ hand, his own trembling as he reached for it. “Was?” he asked, trying to keep his voice from shaking.

Simmons gave a short nod. “Mortar shell. Took his arm. We tried to get him a medic but it was so… there was just so much, we…” He closed his eyes and downed another double that the bartender had knowingly placed in front of him. “Not many of us left now. Just me an’ Barton, Hollister, Ames… not many of us.”

Steven’s eyes were set upon the letter in his hand; he couldn’t look away, the all too familiar sloping handwriting just above the seal, a single letter to address it: _S_.

“You read it?” Steven asked, voice barely a whisper.

Simmons gave another short nod. “Shouldn’t have done.Wasn’t my place.” He glanced up from his empty glass, surveying Steven a long moment before speaking again. “Sarge was a good man,” he repeated. “None of my business, what he’s writin’. Shouldn’t have looked. Not going to flap my gums about it.”

“Thank you,” Steven told him, choking on the words. He finished the last of his gin and tonic and moved to leave, stopping only when Simmons grabbed his arm.

“Sarge was a good man,” he said once more. “Seems to me… seems to me his sweetheart might be hurtin’ awful bad to lose him. So I’d want them to know… he kept his men as safe as he could. I wouldn’t be standin’ here, such as it is, if it weren’t for him. I’d want… I’d want his sweetheart to know that I’m real sorry for the loss.” He let go of Steven’s arm and motioned for another drink.

“Thank you,” Steven repeated softly, then hurried away.

 

He’d read the letter dozens of times since then -- maybe hundreds. He kept it inside of his jacket, as close to his heart as he could. It was all he had left of James, that sloping script of his, so familiar, and a few lines of words written on this last of his commissary stationery. 

_Dearest S---_

_It seems so long since I've seen you. I'd heard just to-day that you've left our beloved New York now and will be out here in the fray before long. I wish you could have stayed behind, my love. This is not a place for man or beast. I would not wish it upon anyone, least of all you._

_Our sergeant has died and I am lead in his stead -- a field promotion. I fear I am not soldier enough for it, but I will do the best I can for the men in my charge. There is hope that this will all come to an end soon. Perhaps with luck I can give you this letter by hand. Otherwise I don't know how or when it shall reach you._

_The Spring has brought with it only mud and rain. It makes the trenches near unbearable. I only wish to warn you of this, beloved. I would spend twice my days here to keep you safe, you must know that._

_We must move soon so I shall bring this note to an end. I think of you always: your eyes, your lips, your tender touches. War cannot last forever, my love. We’ll be home again someday._

_Love Always,  
J_

The letters blurred with the tears in Steven’s eyes. They’d had so many plans, before the war came; they would work hard and save what they could, and open a green grocer in the neighborhood where they grew up, in the empty storefront below the cheap flat they rented. No one would question them sharing the flat above it, two young business partners. Perhaps they’d let people believe they were saving up, trying to become gentlemen of some stature, before pursuing a wife.

Perhaps they’d let them believe whatever they wanted.

All of that was gone now. Steven couldn’t do it on his own and he didn’t want it, not without James. He’d spent too long fighting what he felt for his childhood friend, hating himself for what he was, to give up on him now. James was gone and with him, bit my bit, went pieces of Steven’s soul. There would never be another.

Steve was startled from his melancholy by the shouts of the other men in the trench.

“GAS!” came the startled cry. Fischer, Steven thought it was; he couldn’t be certain.

He groped among the mud and stone for his mask but not before carefully tucking his letter away. Losing the last words that James had written him would be losing James all over again, something he had felt keenly, over and over again, since he’d learned of his lover’s death. He couldn’t stand it if he lost the letter.

It was only a moment’s pause, but it was still too much. Steven’s vision swam, his hands already blistering as he search among the debris for his gas mask. His eyes teared again, not from grief but from the dreaded mustard gas, and the tracks of his tears screamed in pain as they washed over the pustules forming on his face. 

Steven gagged, his tongue swelling, eyes rolling up in his head. Someone grabbed for him, trying to help, but as his lungs burned and blistered, the hands released him.

“Let him be,” a muffled voice called. “He’s already gone.”

Steven fell forward to the ground. Even as he fell, his shaking, mottled hand reached into his jacket to close over the letter there, left to drown with his blistered lungs among the gas and the mud.


	2. Chapter 2

~

Jimmy had a temper. It never served him well, especially now. He wrestled with the strong grip on his arms, kicking his feet back and trying to wrench himself away.

“Lemme go!” he shouted, ignoring the jeering and howling of the other inmates.

“Shut it, ya fuckin’ mocky,” Rumlow growled back, only causing Jimmy to fight him harder.

“Fuck you, Rumlow!” Jimmy spat back, and earned himself a blow to the back of his skull. His head swam and he felt a warm trickle of blood at the back of his head, but he remained conscious.

“Ya hear that, Burch?” Rumlow asked. “The Jew-kid’s got balls, don’t he?”

Burch, the guard holding Jimmy’s other arm, laughed. “Yeah, he does, eh?” he responded with another dark chuckle. “Let’s see how ballsy he is after a week in D-block.”

The mere mention of the notorious cellblock’s name caused even more hooting and hollering from the other inmates in the cafeteria; they celebrated because they were not the ones being damned to the most notorious block in Alcatraz, where prisoners were sent to be punished even further for the behavior while serving their sentence behind bars.

The guards may have called it D-block, but the inmates knew it’s true name: the Hole.

Jimmy had never been sent to D-block before, but he knew it was bad. He heard whispers among the other inmates -- not the cruel things they said to scare the young ones sent to the rock, but the hushed voices passed after hours, when they were supposed to silent and asleep.

It’s cold, they said. Freezing, even in the summer.

It reeks, they said. Not even a pot to piss in down in D-block, just a hole in the ground that’s never cleaned out, it’s horrible stench permeating the entire corridor leading to the solitary confinement cells.

It’s dark, they said. Dark unlike any you might have known before, a pitch blackness that makes time stretch on end, that makes you see things that weren’t really there, shifting about in the nothing.

It’s hell, they said. It had broken men before. Driven them mad. The ones who survived never came back the same -- never came back right. And that was _if_ they survived it.

Jimmy didn’t believe he belonged at Alcatraz, him and Stevie both. They’d been dumb, and so gullible. They believed Zemo when he said they could pull off the bank job without hurting anyone. They’d needed the money desperately; Stevie was so sick all the time, his lungs never quite working right. 

The doctors called it asthma but Jimmy often wondered; asthma wasn’t supposed to burn, at least he thought it wasn’t. 

Stevie had laughed his way through a coughing fit at the dinner table one night, saying that maybe he had burned up to death in a past life and that’s why his lungs burned and his small, slight body ached so badly.

The local pastor that Stevie’s mother had invited to dinner that night looked very unimpressed with Stevie’s assertion, only adding to the disdain already in his eyes for Stevie palling around with a Jimmy, a Jewish kid who lived across the tenement hall.

Stevie had been all smiles and big blue eyes when he insisted that “honestly, Jimmy, I didn’t know she invited Pastor Tom tonight when I asked you to stay for dinner!”

Didn’t know my foot, Jimmy had thought. He knew his Stevie better than all that. But he couldn’t be angry. Not when the scrawny blonde boy with the deep voice and brilliant smile had Jimmy all wrapped around his little finger.

Absently he wondered what Pastor Tom would think of Stevie now, a convicted bank robber and murderer and a queer, bedding himself down with a Jew on top of it. It made Jimmy laugh in spite of himself, even as Rumlow and Burch dragged him down the corridor towards D-block.

They gave him an elbow to the gut to make him stop, but Jimmy just couldn’t control it.

 

After Stevie’s mother died, they were in a bad way. Jimmy’s parents had figured it all out, realized their only son was deeply in love with the boy across the hall, and they were not having it. His mother might have let it go, if he’d promised to leave Stevie be and find a nice Jewish girl to settle down with, but Jimmy’s father was adamant he be out of the house by sundown once it finally clicked in his head.

“No skin off my nose!” Jimmy had responded with a laugh, of all things, and walked out the door with the clothes on his back and nothing more -- straight to the door right across the hall, where Stevie waited with open arms.

They wouldn’t get the cops involved, his parents. They might turn up their nose to him, disown him, but they wouldn’t see him ridiculed or put behind bars. 

Turned out he was headed there anyway.

 

Stevie was sick a lot. The asthma and his aches, his bad back and his scrawny figure… Jimmy was pretty sure there was something wrong with his heart too, by the way he’d get dizzy and lightheaded, his ticker pounding too hard in his chest sometimes. Medicine and doctors were expensive and they were poor, Jimmy’s salary for hauling freight at the docks not enough. Stevie worked when he could, odd jobs here and there, light stuff they usually gave to dames but would give to Stevie to do as an act of charity: paperwork and filing, light cleaning when Stevie’s allergies weren’t bad, even minding someone’s children for a few hours here and there.

But it wasn’t enough. And there was war rumbling across the oceans, and rumors of a draft coming. Stevie wouldn’t be taken but Jimmy would; with him gone, who would look after his best guy?

“We go west,” he told Stevie late one night, the two of them huddled on their bed, laying on their stomachs beneath their thin blanket and shivering in the late winter cold. They were passing a cigarette back and forth and peering at an old copy of Life magazine, looking at photos of sunshine and citrus groves. “We sell everything we can, take the money, and hit the road. Go where it’s warm, where you’ll feel better. Maybe even get us some land, grow our own… I don’t know, lemons and shit.”

Stevie chuckled, then took a drag on the cigarette, stifling a cough before handing it back to Jimmy.

“D’ya think we could do it?” he asked. “If something happens, if we get called up…”

“I ain’t get called up,” Jimmy told him sternly. “Can’t drag a body off to war if you can’t find’im, now can ya? We travel around, don’t even have to use our real names until we settle. No one’s draggin’ me away from my best guy.”

Stevie had frowned. “It’s our patriotic duty, Jimmy,” he said sullenly, and Jimmy barked a laugh.

“Our patriotic duty?” Jimmy echoed. “Babydoll, my only duty in this life is to take care of you. That’s all I’m in it for.”

Stevie had tried to glare at him, tried to look disapproving, but broke into a grin as Jimmy stubbed their cigarette out on the windowsill. Then when Jimmy leaned in to kiss him so gently, just the way he liked, there was no way Stevie was about to complain.

 

That seemed eons ago; had it really been only months? Back before they left New York, left behind what little family and friends they had left and the only life they had ever known.

Before Zemo.

They met him in the alley behind a drugstore in Kansas. Stevie had been feeling poorly and Jimmy was intent on seeing him well, but they had spent the last of their money on a second-hand pair of boots for Jimmy, at his lover’s insistence.

“One of us has to work,” Stevie had reprimanded. “And you can’t be runnin’ around in my old boots, fallin’ apart on your feet. Step on a rusty nail and then where’d I be, huh Jimmy?”

“You’d make do,” Jimmy retorted, still against spending the cash.

“I wouldn’t want to,” Stevie told him honestly, and damned if that didn’t do it for Jimmy. He couldn’t say no, not when Stevie was looking at him like that, all wide-eyed and earnest.

So he’d bought the boots from the pawn shop and now there they were, Stevie’s lungs whistling like a teapot and no money for even a pack of the stinky old asthma cigarettes that sometimes helped. 

Jimmy told Stevie to wait out back; if they couldn’t get what they needed the right way, they’d get it the wrong way. Zemo strolled up just as Jimmy snuck out the back door of the drugstore and into the alley.

“Little hard up for cash, boys?” he had asked casually, grinning at them.

Stevie scowled. “What’s it to you?” he asked.

Hands raised in defence, Zemo shook his head. “Hey, don’t jump on me, fella,” he drawled placatingly. “Just thought like you fellas looked like you could use a payday, is all. Sure know I could, and I got an easy way into some cash. Just need a couple helping hands, if you know what I mean.”

He had promised it would be simple, that there was no bank guard and with the draft looming, all of the cashiers at the little bank in town were dames. It’d be easy as pie to slip in on the lunch hour, pull a mask over their heads and hand someone a note.

“All the businesses in town make their cash drops on Friday mornings,” Zemo explained as they went over the plan. “We get in, we get the money, we get out. No harm done. Split the cash two ways and then we’re in the wind. Won’t even need a gun.”

“Three ways,” Stevie corrected with a frown.

Zemo had snorted. “Anybody can tell you two are a packaged deal from a mile off, kid,” he said, shaking his head. “Besides, this is my plan. It’s 50/50 or it’s nothing.”

They grudgingly took the offer.

“We do this, and we’re set, Stevie,” Jimmy said dreamily. They’d bedded down in an abandoned barn just a few miles outside of town, propping their bedrolls up on some old hay to help them keep warm. “Bet that’d be enough cash to get us to California, maybe even enough for a down payment on some land!”

“You think so?” Stevie asked, trying to keep the edge of hope out of his voice. He tried not to hope for this, not since he had been born half-broken and sickly. Hope just never seemed to work out, not for Stevie.

“We’ll be gentleman farmers!” Jimmy told him excitedly, and Stevie had laughed and laughed.

 

Zemo had lied. Sure, there were women working at the bank, but there were men too, and a security guard. There had been no note, no easy, quiet in-and-out.

There had only been Zemo firing a gun in the air about as soon as they slipped their masks on and walked up to the counter, screaming and demanding not the cash on hand, but the contents of some safe deposit box. It had been a set-up, Zemo using them as manpower to get what he wanted. 

He had sense their desperation; they’d become the perfect patsies.

It didn’t last long. A policeman taking a stroll on his lunch hour had heard the shots and the small bank had quickly been surrounded by the entirety of the little town’s police force. It ended with Zemo taking six bullets to the chest, but not before he had shot five people and killed two.

It didn’t matter that Stevie and Jimmy hadn’t so much as held a gun, or that they’d pulled off their sackcloth masks and tried to help the hostages, Stevie going so far as to try and staunch the blood flowing from the wound of one young ladies who worked there, a blonde who had whispered that her name was Beth, and would be please tell her husband she had loved him dearly?

Stevie had cried, telling her that she would be okay, that they would take her away to the hospital and fix her right up. She died there in his arms.

Bank robbery, they were told, was a federal crime, and for two young vagabonds such as themselves, no doubt on an undiscovered crime spree as they traveled across the country, there could only be one place for them. Jimmy had tried to bargain, promising he’d confess to everything if Stevie could be spared, but they had told him no dice. They were shipped off together and it’d been hell ever since.

Jimmy hadn’t started the scuffle in the cafeteria, but he had finished it. He’d heard from Wilson that some bullshit gang in their cellblock was looking to induct a new member and had given him the task of roughing up Stevie to prove his worth. They didn’t like Stevie -- he was too small and too quick-witted, quick with a retort but without the brawn to back it up.

He had fight in him -- Jimmy had always loved that about the punk, the hellfire in his eyes when he got really riled up -- but he’d never last in a big dust-up. Word was this new fella was packing a shiv fashioned from a toothbrush in his shoe on top of it.

The guards disliked Stevie for the same reasons the other inmates did. They wouldn’t be fast to act if he got stuck. No, Jimmy couldn’t allow that.

This new fella -- Hammer or something, Jimmy thought -- he didn’t even make it near Stevie. Jimmy had broken his nose and knocked out a couple teeth for him even thinking to try.

 

Jimmy resigned himself. It was gonna be hell, but he could stand it, and Wilson promised he’d keep an eye on Stevie until he was back. Stevie was safe, and that’s what mattered. They had a long stretch in this pit, but they’d survive it. And when they got out, Jimmy was going to give his best guy the life he had promised him.

That was what he’d think about, in the cold and the dark. The days to come, the good times they’ve had. Their life together.

They had reached D-block and were let inside by another guard on duty there, a gangly man who leered at Jimmy as they dragged him inside. When the door didn’t lock with a clang behind them, Jimmy frowned and tried to look back but earned another swat with Rumlow’s baton.

“You leave him be, you fuckers!” an angry shout came from behind him, and Jimmy groaned. He should have known. 

“Ah hell…” Jimmy grumbled, then grunted when they threw him against the door to his home for the next week or so.

“I didn’t do nothin’ wrong!” Stevie shouted. He was bleeding from the nose and the lip, the guards no doubt having roughed him up as the hauled him down.

“Shut your faggot mouth!” Rumlow shouted over his shoulder, then turned back to Jimmy. He grabbed Jimmy by his dark hair and yanked him up to growl directly in his ear. “You think we don’t know, Jew-boy? Think we don’t know what you and your little faggot friend whisper about at night? If it were up to me, I’d toss both you queers over the fence and into the bay.”

Jimmy panicked. It was stupid and useless, but he couldn’t help himself. They were dragging Stevie along and opening a second cell door; it was too cold for him, too damp. The reek of waste already permeating the corridor; his lungs could never handle that.

He screamed and fought and thrashed at the guards, biting Rumlow’s hand and kicking Burch in the gut before they managed to shove him into the cell. All he could think of was getting away, of getting Stevie out of there, somewhere safe. Then he’d take his punishment, a week in the Hole, a month, a year… anything to keep Stevie safe.

The heavy steel door slammed shut and shrouded him in darkness, but Jimmy still threw himself at it, screaming and banging on the cold steel until his voice gave out and his knuckles bled, and he collapsed into a fit of tears on the ground.

“We’ll get out,” he whispered, knowing still that Stevie couldn’t hear him through the thick stone walls. “We’ll get out of here, babydoll, I promise. We’ll be home again someday.”

He didn’t know how long he was there; he tried to count the times the shoved a tray of thin, cold broth through the slot on the door, but Jimmy could swear they mixed it up on purpose, feeding him twice on some days, once on others, just to make sure he’d lose track. Alone in the dark, he was certain he was going mad. 

One night -- one day, who could tell? And what did it matter? -- Jimmy felt something inside him break. It was over. He knew it, it was all over.

He started shrieking for all he was worth, throwing himself at the door only to be ignored. Days passed before they pulled him back out and it was far, far too late.

Jimmy stumbled in the sunlight, stinking of piss and shivering, not even hearing the guards as they muttered about hosing him down in the yard before throwing him back into his regular cell. He watched through squinting eyes as they opened Stevie’s cell and hollered for him to come out, receiving no reply.

Burch swore and ventured inside, dragging Stevie out into the corridor. Jimmy didn’t have to look to know, but look he did -- needing that one last glimpse. Stevie’s body was stiff, his lips and fingertips raw and bitten down, no doubt by the rats that would climb up through the waste hole in the cell floor. His eyes were wide and staring, filmed over and milky white. There was trace of mucus on his face and bare chest.

Pneumonia, probably, Jimmy thought. Stevie’d had a cold when they had been tossed into the Hole, and it had been freezing there in the dark.

“Well, shit,” Rumlow grumbled. “Now I’m gonna have to report this bullshit…” he mumbled, kicking Stevie’s prone body with the toe of his shiney work boot. That did it for Jimmy; he was like a wild man, launching himself at Rumlow, scratching and biting whatever he could, screaming all the while. 

He had promised Stevie he would take care of him; he had _promised_.

Jimmy sunk his teeth into Rumlow’s nose, drooling and gnawing as the guard began to shriek. He could hear footsteps running towards them but he didn’t care, just kept up tearing at the guard’s nose until a rain of heavy batons fell upon him, and he knew no more.


	3. Chapter 3

~

Steve held the megaphone; he had the voice that Jim didn’t, the words flowing out easily to attract the attention of onlookers as they crossed the campus. Jim was okay with being the muscle at his side, fending off the preppy, monied boys who dared try and interrupt. Jim knew what this campus was -- a hiding place for the children of the elite, somewhere to send their sons to keep them safe from the draft that was killing a generation of the poor, one teenage boy at a time.

Jim looked imposing, standing there beside Steve, who could have easily fit in, if he weren’t wearing his army jacket. He had those collegiate good lucks all the girls were after -- blonde hair, blue eyes, clean-shaven, tall and built and effortlessly charming. His smile was enough to set a heart aflame -- Jim knew that from personal experience.

Jim wasn’t quite so inviting. His hair was too long and his scruff left unshaven; he twitched and jumped often, always on edge, standing just a mite shorter than Steve but blockier of build -- or, at least, he used to be, before he lost his arm to a landmine. He wore his own army jacket, the empty sleeve neatly pinned up at the shoulder.

They’d been home over a year now, but it wasn’t enough that they were safe; it had to _end_. It all had to end. Enough blood had been spilled fighting the war of a bunch of rich men in suits who liked to move soldiers across the board like so many chess pieces. If one breaks, well there are always more.

And _their_ kids remain safe. _Their_ kids are protected. 

They had a crowd around them, some who stood to protest with them, others who were only there to watching. Steve and Jim were both students at the university, so they couldn’t be shooed off campus, though they might be forced to disperse.

Steve had to pause, lowering the megaphone as he erupted into a brief spate of coughing. He hadn’t expected to be discharged alongside Jim; he thought he’d have a quick visit at the hospital in Cu Chi during his brief leave after their last offensive, but the doctors had heard him coughing and they frowned. 

“Captain, where has your unit been?” they had asked, peering at him curiously.

Steve had frowned. They’d been in the jungle, of course. They were always in the jungle, always hot and wet and covered in mosquito bites, and god knows what else. 

It was the god-knows-what-else that was the problem, as it happened. Some genius in the Pentagon had thought the best way to fight a war -- police action, not a war, must always be careful with that -- in the jungle was to get rid of the jungle. They started dumping every chemical known to man from drop planes flying over the foliage day and night, just as long as they’d kill anything green that could grow.

They didn’t think too hard on the fact that they were dropping gallons upon gallons of those same chemicals all over their own troops. Steve had take one too many lung-fulls of something they were calling ‘Agent Orange’; it made it hard for him to breathe sometimes, made his lungs burn and ache, and made him cough until he was out of breath.

Apparently that earned him a discharge along his friend.

Friend wasn’t the right word, though. They were still trying to define it. They lived together off campus, had a few close friends but mostly kept to themselves. 

They fucked. That had been new for both of them; they’d edged there way into something they didn’t quite understand, but wasn’t as uncommon as each had once thought. They fumbled their way through it for awhile -- they had their ideas but it had taken a while to get there.

It was nice; they’d share a joint on the couch, put some records on, and lean on each other late into the night before retiring to the bed they shared. They didn’t advertise it, but they didn’t hide it either.

If anyone asked him about Jim, Steve would simply shrug and say, “I need him.” It was true enough, in its own way.

 

Neither man had been keen on going off to war. It wasn’t like the wars of old, the ones that seemed to really mean something. This was a rich man’s squirmish, stubborn old men who couldn’t come up with a worthwhile reason to fight each other, so they sent their soldiers to fight a war on behalf of someone else. 

They’d found each other there, though -- found what they needed in one another. It was how they survived. It was how they got out with their minds mostly intact.

And neither was ready to lay down and let others go through what they did, not without a fight.

 

“You okay, punk?” Jim asked, voice pitched low. He used his one good hand to unscrew the cap from the canteen at his hip, then offered it to Steve, who took it with a grateful smile. He downed half of it in one go before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and glancing around the quad.

“Think we’re gettin’ through to them, Jim?” he asked with a sigh.

“We’re reachin’ them,” Jim told him, nodding. “We’ll keep shouting, and they’ll have to listen. They’ll have no choice.”

Steve glanced around again; the crowd had gotten larger, and moved in a little closer. Jim still had trouble with that sometimes, too many people in even an open space like the campus quad could get under his skin. 

“You doin’ okay, babe?” he asked quietly, receiving a short nod in reply.

“I’ll manage,” Jim affirmed. Steve nodded in return and took a deep, pained breath before raising the megaphone to his lips once again.

“The war needs to end now!” he shouted, earning both cheers and groans from the crowd. “Our troops are dying every day, fighting someone else’s battle!”

Jim took a deep breath. He could do this. He could _do this_.

 

It had been different in the jungle. There was something terribly wild about those days, free but still somehow wrong. Men became monsters there; Jim had seen it with his own eyes, time and again. Sometimes, he feared he could understand why they did; sometimes, he feared he was slipping away a little himself.

But there was Steve there, keeping them all on the straight and narrow. His platoon respected him enough that they took orders without question, whether it was to stand down or to run for cover. And when he told them to _stop_ \-- when he told them they were in the wrong, that they needed to retreat and regroup -- they listened.

If anyone had asked Jim, he’d have told you that Steve was the best Captain the U.S. Army had ever seen, but they never asked his opinion much at all. 

Jim would never forget the day he lost his arm, for more than the obvious reasons. They had been on routine patrol; they had leave coming up, nothing that would get them home but enough to get out of the jungle and into a real bed for a couple days, eat some real food for a change and not this crap out of cans and plastic pouches. Some of the guys might try to get laid; a year ago, Jim might have tried to join them.

But he’d felt something stirring within him, something… different. It reminded him of his very first crush, a cute little thing named Dottie who would babysit him while his mother went to BINGO and his father worked the late shift. She’d made his stomach flip-flop and his heart flutter; even though he thought he was far too old for a babysitter, he still looked forward to each and every night she came by to earn a few dollars.

The thing was, he was feeling all of that again when his _Captain_ looked at him.

The thing was, he was pretty sure it wasn’t just him.

There was something in the way Steve smiled at him, something small and private that only Jim seemed to see. When he’d ask for a match to light a smoke, he’d let his fingers drift slowly across Jim’s when he moved to pass one over. 

There was something _there_.

He’d made up his mind to talk to Steve about it. It might get him busted nose or just busted back down to corporal -- he had earned those sergeant stripes on his shoulder, damn it -- but it would be worth it, just to get it off his chest. Just to quiet what he was feeling, to put it to bed and let it drift into his unconscious as some peculiarity of war that he hadn’t expected.

But it didn’t drift away.

Steve’s eyes had gone huge and round, almost comically wide, when Jim tried to stumble his way through what was either a question or an explanation, even Jim himself was never quite sure.

“It’s not just me?” Steve asked, voice faint and clearly stunned.

And well. _Well_. What else could he have done, really? What else could Jim have done in that moment, alone in the jungle and halfway around the world from home, the rest of their platoon splashing around a river nearby, leaving them with some semblance of privacy?

Jim had never kissed another man in his life and the awkward way Steve didn’t seem to know where to put his hands made it clear that he hadn’t either; eventually, though, eventually they figured it out and Jim found himself wishing he had known this all along, what this feeling was, what it was like to feel the heat of Steve’s hands against his bare back in the hot sticky jungle air.

The others came laughing and tromping back to camp before they had time to do much more than make out a little but it was enough. Because Jim knew now -- he knew what the smiles were, the touches, that feeling in his chest like his heart had wings and was ready to burst out and fly away.

Now he had something to look forward to. Now he had something to fight for.

 

The call came over the radio a little after two in the morning, local time. There were Viet Cong in the area and they were moving towards the platoon’s position. There were too many coming to mount a real offensive and they were moving in from the south, blocking out any possible retreat. The platoon would have to move further into the jungle until they got to a rendezvous about a mile away; there was a clearing there and with any luck, a chopper could pick them up before they were noticed.

Steve pulled Jim aside as the others packed up their gear. “We can’t…” he began, and Jim nodded.

“I know,” he agreed.

“But when this is over… when we get out of here…” Steve said, smiling softly. “I’m heading back to Brooklyn, once I get my points. You?”

Jim grinned. “You know it,” he said, nodding. He glanced to see if the other men were watching and, one certain their attention was elsewhere, he reached out and gave Steve’s hand a squeeze. “We’ll be home again someday,” he said quietly.

Steve gave a pleased sigh. “Home,” he agreed with a nod, squeezing Jim’s hand back before letting it go. Turning to the others he called out, “C’mon men, let’s get the lead out. We got some ground to cover tonight.”

It sounded fairly cut and dry; Jim felt pretty light on his feet, and he hadn’t been sleeping anyway. A mile didn’t seem too far.

He didn’t see the mine. Instead he saw the tripwire for another explosive, nearly stepping through it in the dark but shifting his footing and calling out a warning to the others to be wary of their footsteps. His sidestep to avoid the wire sent him stumbling, tripping over a thick exposed root of a nearby tree and falling forward without any warning.

Jim put his arms out to catch himself, to keep from hurting himself too badly as he fell. They never knew who the mine belonged to -- one of theirs, one of ours, what did it matter? They just told him he was lucky, so very lucky that it had been small. It just took his arm, and not his life.

He was on the ground. It took a few seconds to realize that, and to wonder why. His ears were ringing terribly, the only other sounds he could hear sounding muffled and far away. There were shouts for Gabe, the medic in their platoon; he thought he could hear Steve barking orders, but he wasn’t entirely certain. Everything seemed muted but thunderous somehow, and all Jim was really aware of was the strange sensation of lightness that seemed to blot out any pain.

Then Steve was there. Something was being wrapped around him tightly, around his chest and shoulder, too tight to be comfortable. Steve was talking, telling him he’d be okay, that the clearing was only a few clicks away and they’d make it in no time at all. Jim’s eyes drifted to where Steve’s kept flicking, and he surveyed the bloody stump where his left arm had been.

“Steve?” he asked dazedly.

“Yeah, Jim, I gotcha, I’m here,” Steve told him, and Jim realized that it was Steve that had gotten him to his feet while Gabe bound his wounds as best he could in tight bandages. His good arm -- his _only_ arm -- was over Steve’s wide shoulders and Jim was leaning heavily into him to keep standing.

Jim’s eyes fluttered a moment before he grinned crazily. “Do me a solid, reach down into that mess and grab my watch, yeah?”

Steve, face pale and splattered with blood, stared at him wide-eyed for a beat before bursting into laughter.

“Jesus Christ, Jim,” Gabe said, chuckling as he trooped alongside him. “Just… Jesus Christ.”

“Fuck you, Gabe, I’m Jewish,” Jim told him, earning more laughter from the rest of the group. He was beginning to feel a little loopy now, the heat and the blood loss getting to him, but he kept pushing on. Safety was only a short run through the jungle away; he was getting out of this place alive.

Gabe cackled. “Well, shit, then… Moses, or something?”

Jim laughed, his head lolling on Steve’s shoulder. In the distance, they could hear the sound of the chopper blades, circling overhead.

 

The crowd around them had grown, with more voices joining their protest. A few student groups had arrived with signs and flyers, and a counter protest from one of the fraternities on campus had formed at the edges of the group. 

From his window far above the campus quad, Dean Pierce surveyed the scene with a sneer. He hated the protestors, foolish children who thought their opinion on matters of war and government should matter. Even worse, he hated the protestors who had once been soldiers, the ones who had come home and decided to decry their own actions and insist that they knew better than their superiors.

He’d been watching Steve and Jim for some time. They were always stirring things up, and it was grating on him. At first, Pierce had been pleased that the decorated veterans had become part of the university’s student body -- a wonderful PR addition in a time when the media was beginning to decry the number of privileged young men being admitted, perhaps without merit, to protect them from the draft. 

As they _should_ be protected; they were the next generation of leaders, soon to be titans of politics and industry. They were _necessary_. These others, a generation of hippies and stoners and dreamers, they were expendable.

Having the returning serviceman on campus, though… that would look good for visiting journalists and huffy benefactors who were concerned about the war effort.

If only they hadn’t turned out to be such a god damn thorn in his side. He couldn’t have them removed from campus; they were students, they were had legal right to be there and they hadn’t broken any university policies or bylaws. Pierce had long insisted that the university would encourage spirited discourse, would support the student’s right to protest but this… this was too much.

The crowd was too large. The soldiers, in their olive drab, one standing sullenly beside the other, glaring out as if daring someone to try and stop them, and the other with the megaphone, voice cracking and hoarse after a day long protest but still not stopping.

It was just too much.

Pierce had friends in high places. The governor was an old school chum, and it took only a phone call to get what he needed, a unit of the National Guard deployed to disperse the crowd. It was too much, Pierce would say; the number of people gathered far exceeding a safe environment for peaceful protest. 

He never expected the pushback. Men in military uniforms and riot gear arrived at the campus quad just as the sun began to set and the sight of them raised the hackles of the crowd. The fringe counter protest had whooped and cheered, but the outcry of the rest was deafening.

They pushed. They shoved. They swore. It just made Steve shout louder, made Jim huddle closer to ensure that they both remained safe as the crowd grew more and more unruly.

No one was ever sure what exactly started it. Some say a rock was thrown, others a brick. Some said it was an angry protester who spit on a member of the National Guard; still others insisted it was a guardsman who had shoved young woman to the ground. No matter the cause, the violence erupted quickly and suddenly, and soon the once peaceful protest became an all out brawl.

“Stop!” Steve tried to call over the megaphones. “Stop, please! That’s not what this is about!” 

But it was to no avail; the roar of the crowd was too loud, the heightened emotions taking over so that they had even begun fighting amongst themselves. Steve and Jim were getting shoved left and right, and Jim grabbed Steve’s hand with his good arm and tried to drag him out of the fray; that was when the first shots were fired.

They crowd screamed, running this way and that, knocking into each other and falling. Jim began to panic, desperate to get away, but people kept pushing back and he tried to pull Steve to safety. Three more shots, and he stopped trying.

Three more shots and he hit the ground, eyes half-lidded and a perfectly round bullet hole just above his left eyebrow.

Steve _howled_ in fury and anguish.They’d gotten out -- they’d made it back to the States, almost intact. They were just trying to do what’s right.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t _right_.

His military training took over and Steve ran for the guardsman. He put down two and had gotten his hands on the rifle of another before the guns turned on him. The papers would later read that two disturbed veterans had started a riot and attacked the National Guard sent to diffuse the situation. Some would try and speak up, to say that wasn’t how it happened, but it didn’t matter.

They’d made it out, but they never really made it home.


	4. Chapter 4

~

He hated seeing Jamie like this. He’s always been a little body proud, a little fitness obsessed, if Steven was being honest. He didn’t mind it, though; he liked the idea of it, that Jamie was keeping healthy, keeping them _both_ healthy. It made Steven dream of a good long life, of growing old together, somewhere safe and quiet.

How wrong he had been.

Steven left New York when he was seventeen years old. His parents were dead and something inside of him needed the warmth, needed to get away and into the sunshine. He met Jamie in a bar on Haight Street two years after relocating and they hit it off immediately; it just seemed to move along perfectly from there.

Jamie was another New York transplant, an aspiring novelist by day and a bartender by night. He had a studio apartment that cost more monthly than Steven’s first car, and after a few weeks of casual dating followed swiftly by a few months of solid commitment, Steven had moved in. It was nice; they were happy. It was strange to the both of them, how it had always felt comfortable and safe. Familiar, even.

They found out they had grown up not very far from one another in Brooklyn, something as simple as a school district line sending them into different social circles.

Steven often thinks that maybe, just maybe, if he had known Jamie when he was young, neither of them would ever have left New York.

California had its perks, but Steven often found himself longing for home. It was a longing that Jamie shared.

“You can live in a place,” Jamie thought aloud one relatively cool evening, their windows open to let in the breeze and give them an excuse to huddle beneath a ratty old blanket on their bed. “You can live there as long as you like, even with family, with your… with the guy you love. But it doesn’t really make it _home_.”

Steven nodded. “Closest thing I’ve had to home since my Ma died is findin’ you,” Steven confessed, almost shyly. It was funny; he and Jamie had been together long enough that he shouldn’t blush at his touches or drop his gaze when he tried to express something deep-seated and emotional, but Steven couldn’t help himself. It almost didn’t seem real at times, that two boys from Brooklyn had managed to find each other on an opposite coast after setting out for a fresh start.

That Steven could even find someone like Jamie at all, really.

As a kid, he’d been sickly. Too skinny, catching every bug that came his way. His mother had said he’d even been born small and sick, skin a pallid blue as he struggled to breathe once expelled from the safety of her womb. Perhaps it had been that all too rude rush into the world that had stayed with Steven for years, keeping him little and slight, brash and bony. He’d gotten into his dust-ups, even as a young boy, in spite of his stature. It just took a few years for his body to catch up with his brain.

Steven had added nearly a foot to his height in his high school years, a late stage growth spurt his doctors were surprised to see but attributed to improvements in his general health; a new medication finally got his asthmatic lungs under control and without the constant barrage of steroid treatment that had the unfortunate side effect of suppressing his immune system, his body managed to heal itself and get back on track somewhat easily.

For his part, Steven was glad of it; his father had been nearly six feet tall, and it had embarrassed Steven as a child that he should stand so small in such a very long shadow. His father had died when Steven was only six years old, victim of a late night hit and run as he changed buses for his commute home after the late shift at the docks where he worked. The death had taken its toll on Steven’s mother, already run ragged with a constantly ill child; he’d never voice it aloud, but Steven thought perhaps she had given in to the cancer that took her some eleven years later, just looking for some peace at last.

She had known about him then -- know about him all along, what he was. Steven had been long afraid to tell her; they were a staunchly Catholic family and the Church had been very vocally letting its parishioners know what it thought of men like Steven. 

“I just want you to be happy, baby,” his mother had said, taking one of his hands in her own as he sat at her hospital bedside. Her hands bothered him so much now -- strong, working hands gone seemingly shriveled and so cold as she became sicker and sicker. It was too far gone by then; the cure that had seemed as debilitating as the cancer itself hadn’t taken hold, and she was dying. There was nothing more they could do.

“I am happy, Ma,” Steve told her, putting on a brave face. “We just need to get you better, is all. Get you home. Then I’ll be real happy, I promise.”

She gave him a tired smile. “Oh, Steven. We both know I’m not getting better. I’ll be going home to God soon enough. So I need to make sure that you’ll be alright on your own.”

Steven closed his eyes, a few tears betraying him to slip loose and slide down his cheeks. “Ma… c’mon, Ma, don’t talk like that. You can’t be talkin’ like that, the doctors said. ‘A positive outlook is as good as any medicine’, remember?”

She chuckled and patted his hand before letting it go. “Steven, don’t you try and lie to your mother. They haven’t told me yet but I know all of this radiation isn’t doing me a damn bit of good. I’ve settled things with myself and I’m ready to meet my maker, don’t you worry. But you’ve got a long road ahead of you, kiddo, and I need to know that you’ll be able to manage it.”

She reached up with one frail hand and gently touched his cheek before smoothing back his blonde hair, always too long on top for her liking. She gave a soft smile but it only seemed to make his tears fall more quickly.

“No more crying now,” she warned. “You’ll just fog up your glasses.”

Steve barked a startled laugh and reached to push his wire-rimmed glasses back up his nose from where they had started to slide in his grief. The medicine had done well by him and there was little evidence of his childhood maladies left, but they could never do a thing for his eyesight. He had needed reading glasses at eight and had nearly been in bifocals at twelve.

Perhaps, he would think later, that was what had inspire his love for photography; the zoom lens made things more clear than his glasses ever seemed to do.

“You want me to just sit here and smile, watching you drift away from me?” Steven asked, shaking his head. “I love you, Ma. You’re all I got. So I’m gonna cry sometimes. More and more, probably, and even more after you’re gone.”

“And that’s why you have to promise me you’ll find someone,” his mother told him with a nod and a tired smile. “I don’t want you to spend your time mopin’ and mournin’ me, Steven. You go out there and find yourself somebody to love. Get me some grandbabies to look down on and smile.”

Steven blanched. He thought they’d never need to have this conversation. “I don’t know about any grandbabies…” he began, not sure how to proceed.

She seemed to wave off his concerns with her hand. “Grandbabies, grandpuppies, grandkitties, I don’t mind,” she said, shaking her head. “You just find yourself a nice… a nice boy and settle yourselves down somewhere, make a life.”

Steven’s eyes widened in surprise. “Ma…?” he asked.

“Don’t be so shocked, Steven, I’m your mother,” she told him dryly. “And I know my son. Kiddo, I don’t care who you love. I just want you to be with someone who cares about you enough to be your family now.”

Steven broke down; he couldn’t help it. He’d been barely twelve years old when he realized he wasn’t like the other boys in his class, blushing and tumbling over his words if one of the girls so much as looked their way. He liked the girls just fine -- Angie was the best at recess, always picking Steven for her dodgeball team even though he couldn’t run like the other boys, and Nat had punched Alex right in the face when he’d called Steven a bad name -- but he didn’t wonder at him like the other boys did. Sammy said he wondered if Nat’s hair was as soft as it looked once, and Barney always blushed and whispered that Angie had a pretty smile.

Steven thought Carter had a pretty smile, a dark-haired boy one grade up from him who always acknowledged Steven in the hallway with at least a nod or a wave, and sat with him on the bus during field trips. He made Steven feel butterflies in his stomach. Carter didn’t even _have_ to kiss Steven, right on the lips, in the back of the stegosaurus exhibit at the Natural History Museum when the rest of the classes had moved one, for Steven to know that he was different.

“But… but Father Michael says…” Steven began, voice trembling. His mother had attended Mass nearly every Sunday for as long as Steven could remember, missing it only when Steven was very ill and in the hospital, and the Sunday after his father had been killed. A loud and commanding presence, Father Michael’s sermons often addressed the supposed dangers of day to day life that his flock faced, particularly leaning towards women who were promiscuous and men who dared to love other men.

Shocking him, Steve’s mother snorted.

“That old windbag thinks women ought to treat their husbands like kings and the Mass should still be in Latin,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve known since I was a girl that the most important thing about living a good life is to love. Just like I’ve known that my little boy had a fancy for other boys for about as long as he did. You find yourself a nice boy to love, Steven. Someone who will love you as much as I do.”

It was only a few days after the conversation that Steven never dreamed they could ever have that his mother passed away. It was a quiet death -- a _good_ , peaceful death the nurses told him, as if death could ever be good. She passed in her sleep, without struggling through pain or the sort of worrisome anxiety that the doctors warned him might come. 

Steven was a teenager and all alone in the world -- alone until he met Jamie.

Of course, there had been others. He’d gotten himself into a scrape here and there, between New York and San Francisco. An older man who he realized far too late was only interested in him for his youthful look. A sweet but mixed-up kid his own age, a little too heavy into drugs for Steve’s like and closeted on top of it. 

And then there was Jamie.

Steven was only in the bar for an assignment. He’d been lucky; his mother’s life insurance policies had been enough for a decent burial and to fund Steven’s cross-country trek. There had even been enough for him to buy a new camera -- a good one, a real SLR that he would never have afforded otherwise. He’d made his way through his new city taking snapshots and selling him where he could. He’d managed to snag a plum gig from _Blueboy_ magazine, which wanted a feature spread on the bar scene in San Francisco, so Steven, though still underage, had ventured out to run through a few rolls of film and see what popped.

“Can I get you a drink, gorgeous, or you on the job?” Jamie had called from behind the bar. Steven had leaned up against it to get a few crowd shots of the dancefloor and hadn’t even noticed Jamie was there at all until he spoke. His face lit up in recognition as soon as he heard Jamie’s accent.

“Brooklyn?” he asked, and Jamie’s friendly smile had turned into a full-on grin.

“Born and raised,” he responded proudly. “How about you?”

“Pink houses,” Steven agreed, smiling amiably. “St. Benedictine’s parish.”

Jamie shook his head, hands on his hips. “Well I’ll be damned,” he exclaimed. “Have a seat here, pretty boy. Drink’s on me.”

Steven promptly forgot what he was supposed to be doing, his camera sitting neglected on the bartop for the next three hours of Jamie’s shift. They talked about New York -- the people, the food, even the Mets, everything they missed after leaving the city of their birth. Jamie had to step away now and again to take an order or ring up a tab, but it was a Thursday night and it wasn’t overly busy, and it seemed that his boss had spotted their connection and manned the other end of the bar to free Jamie up a bit.

Before either man knew it, Jamie’s shift was over and he regarded Steve with a hopeful smile.

“There’s this diner up the street,” he said, cocking his head to the side so that his shoulder-length brown hair just about fell in his eyes. “They got great coffee and a cheesecake that ain’t quite Junior’s, but it’s still real good. I’d like to buy you a slice, if you’re game.”

Steven grinned and nodded, and it all just snowballed from there.

 

Jamie’s parents knew he was gay, and they didn’t much care. He had a couple of sisters who he wrote to regularly, and he talked to his parents once a month long-distance. 

“My old man, he said, ‘don’t see why you wanna go paint an even bigger target on your back, son, but knock yourself out’,” Jamie explained, putting on an overly gruff voice with an even thicker accent to impersonate his father.

Steven snorted into his coffee before taking a sip. “Bigger target?” he asked, setting down his coffee cup.

Jamie nodded, lighting a cigarette. “Yeah, didn’t I tell you? I’m Jewish,” he explained, exhaling a steady stream of a smoke. “Shit, forgot to ask… you mind?” he went on, gesturing with the lit cigarette.

Steve shook his head. “Nah, it’s fine,” he said. “But what about your religion? They don’t have a problem?”

Jamie shrugged. “Probably do,” he said absently. “Rabbi Larry told my mother not to worry, just long as I stay Kosher and show my face in temple once in a while. Real cool about it, apparently. ‘Jamie is a good little fagele, I wouldn’t worry’,” he said, putting on a thicker Yiddish tone to impersonate his rabbi; Steve couldn’t help but laugh.

Their waitress happened by and sighed, refilling their coffee cups for the umpteenth time. “Look, boys, you’ve been taking up my best booth for two hours and all you’ve ordered is some coffee and a couple pieces of cheesecake. Do me a favor and get a burger, or get lost.”

Jamie grinned at her. “Beth, baby, you just about read my mind,” he declared, and stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray. “Get us a couple double cheeseburgers and fries.”

“Oh,” Steven said, flushing as he realized he barely had enough to pay for his coffee. Rent wasn’t cheap, and Steven hadn’t had regular work since he arrived in the city. “I don’t… I can’t…” 

Jamie was quick to wave off his concerns. “It’s on me, gorgeous,” he said, the flirtatious tone to his voice not lost on Steven as he spoke. “I couldn’t ask you to go dutch on our very first date, could I?”

Steven smiled shyly. “So this is a date?” he asked tentatively.

“I sure hope so,” Jamie replied, and Steven felt his heart soar.

 

That had been almost three years ago. They’d dated, moved in, and started planning for a future. They both liked the city and felt comfortable there but it still wasn’t right. Jamie was almost finished with his novel and Steven was certain it would be a bestseller; he had an agent already who assured him that a tale of star-crossed soldiers in the first World War would be poised to make a huge splash on the literary scene. Steven had been reading it, chapter by typewritten chapter, and was hooked.

Jamie hadn’t written the ending yet; he’d warned that it wouldn’t be happy.

“It doesn’t have to be,” Steven told him, nodding his head as he spoke. “Sometimes the journey is more important than the destination, right? I s’pose a couple of guys in love back then couldn’t really get what they wanted.”

Jamie sighed, a little sadly. “I suppose not,” he agreed, chewing on his lip a moment as he stared down at his typewriter. It was the most expensive thing they owned, after Steven’s camera, propped up on a card table serving as a desk. “Just wasn’t the right time for them.”

Steven smiled as he sidled up behind Jamie’s folding chair, slipping an arm around him and kissing him gently, first on the cheek and then at the join of his shoulder.

“I suppose not,” he said, echoing Jamie’s words. “Good thing we’re living in the right time then, huh?” he added, and Jamie smiled.

Things were looking good for them. Once Jamie finished his novel, his agent could shop it around to publishers. Steven agreed with Peter, Jamie’s agent: no publisher in their right mind would turn it down. Jamie’s writing was elegant and immersive, sweeping the reader right up into the narrative and not letting them go. Even though he knew how it would end, Steven still couldn’t wait for the next chapter, and the one after, and the one after… the words drew him in and clung to him afterwards, making him want more.

The advance money, they were certain, would be enough for them to move home. They missed it more and more, even the slushy streets and dreary gray skies of winter. San Francisco would get cold in the winter months but it was nothing like home. Steven often found himself lost in the moment when they walked the city streets, thinking of how different it would be if he had found Jamie before either had left Brooklyn.

Something about San Francisco just wasn’t _right_ for them. He dreamed of a corner brownstone, something with maybe a retail space below and an apartment above; they could live and work together, start some kind of business, maybe. And be away from the dreary rock across the bay, that little hell-spawn island that held the crumbling remains of the old Alcatraz prison.

Something about it always gave Steven a chill down his spine.

 

It was in early May of that year, just as Jamie was pounding out the last chapters of his novel, that he started to feel off. Steven had noticed it before Jamie did, seeing his cheeks go a little hollow and his body lose a little of its familiar mass. He chalked it up to the stress of finishing the book and the time it was taking; neither of them had been hitting the gym like usual as of late.

Then he started sweating badly in his sleep, the two of them waking up with sheets soaked, Jamie’s hair plastered to his forehead.

The third time Steven woke to hear Jamie retching in their small bathroom, he put his foot down.

“Baby… you gotta see someone about this,” he said, determination in his voice. “It’s not just stress, Jamie. You know that. Something’s really wrong.”

Jamie stood on shaky legs and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. He splashed cool water to rinse his mouth in the sink before turning to look at Steven, deep-seated fear clear in the usually laughter-filled blue eyes that Steven had come to know and love so well.

“Brock died last week,” he said quietly, face looking even more hollowed in the bright bathroom light. “Heard it from Beth, down at the diner.”

Steven closed his eyes, pulling Jamie close against his chest. He was trembling and after a moment, Steven realized he was shaking with silent sobs. Neither of them knew or liked Brock particularly well, but they did _know_ him; he was part of their social circle, frequenting the same night spots and diners, showing up at the same parties. He’d stopped showing up a few months ago and the rumors abounded: that he had _it_. They all knew the name, but many were loathe to use it. 

Sometimes it seemed to loom over them, a silent specter, waiting to pick them off, one by one. Six people -- they’d lost _six people_ in the last year alone, even the ones who had been careful, even the ones who had gone to the clinic with every sneeze and every sniffle, just to be sure.

“We’re not like Brock,” Steven said, as though it mattered anymore. “We’ve been careful. He used needles, Jamie. You know he did, saw the track marks same as me. Neither of us messed with that kind of shit.”

Jamie, still crying, shook his head. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Doesn’t matter, Steven, baby, doesn’t matter anymore. I’m afraid, I’m so afraid…”

He broke down then, the sob becoming louder, breaking his thoughts and not allowing him to speak so much as wail. It wasn’t fair; they deserved better. They _all_ deserved better. 

“I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna die!” Jamie muttered, and Steven just held him tighter, letting his own tears fall without making a sound.

 

The first doctor said that Jamie was fine, that they had nothing to be concerned about. He insisted it was all in their head, panic caused by an overzealous media and community ‘prone to these kind of dramatics’. He was so condescending, so clearly unfazed by their terror.

“Look,” Dr. Zola had said, his little piggy eyes leering at them across his desk. “I know how you boys like to get around. You won’t have anything to worry about if you just learn to keep it in your pants, not sleep with anyone who’ll have you.”

If Jamie hadn’t lost twenty pounds of muscle in recent months, there was no way that Steven could have stopped him from launching himself across the desk at the creepy little man.

The second doctor actually listened.

“Perhaps you would rather discuss this with just the two of us here,” Dr. Erskine said gently as he stepped into the exam room, the results of Jamie’s myriad of tests in hand. 

Jamie tightened his hand around Steven’s and shook his head. “Please, doc,” he pleaded in a quiet, small voice. “Just tell me.”

Dr. Erskine nodded, eyes filled with sorrow as he began to speak and handed down Jamie’s death sentence.

 

The summer passed quietly and Jamie wasted. His weight dropped; he had a persistent sore throat that never seemed to go away and by late August, there was a rash all over his back and chest that nothing seemed to heal. Steven had to convince him to finally tell his parents; when they began to cry and panic over the phone, Jamie had shut them down.

“I don’t need the hysterics,” he snapped. “I’m the one dyin’ here, not you. I just wanted it so you knew, so you didn’t find out after… after…” He closed his eyes and forced a deep breath, swallowing hard and wincing at the pain in his throat.

“We’ll come get you, bring you home, to better doctors!” his mother declared. 

Jamie sighed. “No… no, Momma, no. I need to stay here, with Steven, okay? The doctor ain’t gonna make a difference, not anymore.”

“Then I’ll come take care of you!” she declared.

“No!” Jamie said sharply. “No. I just… I just wanted you to know, Momma. That’s all. I love you, but don’t come here. Steven’ll take care of me just fine and when it’s over, he’ll bring you some of my ashes to put on the mantle or somethin’.”

She began to wail, long and loud, and Jamie shook his head and handed Steven the phone. He couldn’t deal with it, couldn’t deal with their grief. He had his own to contend with.

“Um… ma’am?” Steven asked softly over the line. “Ma’am, are you… is your husband there? Someone who can help you?”

Two weeks after the phone call, Jamie was admitted San Francisco General; he and Steven both knew better than to think he would ever be coming out. His book was left unfinished on the card table in their studio apartment, forgotten for weeks as Jamie’s symptoms became worse. 

It would never be finished now, Steven thought ruefully, the first time his eyes lit upon the manuscript in some time. He had gone home to get a shower and a change of clothes; Jamie had been anxious that morning and he’d been given a sedative to calm him down. He was sleeping peacefully when Steven left and he hoped to be back before he awakened.

Their little studio apartment was a shambles, bed messy but unslept in, empty pizza boxes on the counter, medicine bottles scattered about. Steven felt that way inside, a disorganized heap of fear and emotion, struggling to stay calm and brave for Jamie’s sake even when he was terrified.

He was going to lose Jamie -- he was going to lose his _everything_. 

When Steven returned to the hospital, Jamie was indeed awake, but his eyes were wide and staring at what seemed like nothing at all. There was sweat on his brow and the monitors seemed to indicate his heart rate was elevated. Steven tried not to look at Jamie’s thin twisted limbs beneath the sheets and simply took his place in the seat beside the bed, reaching to take Jamie’s hand in his own.

“A green grocer,” Jamie muttered, licking his dry lips. “Or perhaps a soda fountain.”

Steven frowned. “Jamie?” he asked. “What are you…?”

A nurse stepped in as he spoke, checking an IV bag hanging at Jamie’s bedside. “It’s just the fever, hon,” she told Steven quietly. “He’s delirious with it. We’re trying to bring it down.”

Steven glanced up and gave her a tired smile, recognizing her as a regular on Jamie’s floor. That made her special, he knew; even now, there weren’t many who would voluntarily venture into this den of the doomed and dying.

“Thanks, Sharon,” he said softly, and she gave him a sympathetic smile.

“Let me know if he gets anxious,” she reminded as the moved out the door. “We can give him more to keep him calm if he needs it.”

Jamie, oblivious to their conversation, shook his head. “They say it may be over soon,” he intoned, then turned towards Steven, giving him a smile so bright and happy that it looked almost grotesque on his thin shadowed features. “We’ll be home again someday.”

Steven nodded. “Of course we will, baby,” he agreed. “Of course we will.”

Jamie died that night. Steven was there, still holding his hand. Once they had come in and turned off all the machines and alarms, they left Steven there with him for awhile, just holding his hand and watching his now peaceful features, sometimes searching for a new breath to come, some kind of miracle, but mostly just trying to memorize everything he could about the man he loved so dearly before they took him away.

After some time Sharon came in, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “They have to take him now,” she said quietly. “I’m so sorry, Steven. I liked him very much.”

Steven nodded, and was about to give her his thanks for the kind treatment she had shown them over Jamie’s time in the hospital, but his voice caught in his throat. A sudden raucous bout of coughing overtook him and Steven leaned forward, trying to catch his breath. It took far longer than it should and when he straightened, Steven saw to his own horror that there was fresh red blood sprayed across the hand he had used to cover his mouth and dotting the stark white linens of Jamie’s hospital bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a bit long -- I felt that it needed it. I read up as much as I could to make it as accurate as possible, but please let me know if there are any glaring errors. I cried a lot as I wrote it. I'm sorry if you do too.


	5. Chapter 5

~

Bucky Barnes was pretty well sick of his best friend’s bullshit and he’d told him so. Several times. At length. And in two different languages.

The Russian was probably overkill but Bucky has been [a] extremely irritated with Clint’s incessant pestering, and [b] hoping the language would put the fear of God into Clint -- or at least the fear of his Russian-born girlfriend, Natasha, who was also Bucky’s former tutor and other best friend.

Plus, he needed to get some use out of the language degree he’d gotten and prove to himself if not his parents that a double major in literature and in Russian had been a worthwhile endeavor.

Clint cocked an eyebrow at him. “You know Tasha uses her Russian most during sexytimes, yeah?” he asked, and Bucky grimaced.

“Christ on a crutch, Barton, you don’t need to be sharin’ that kind of shit with me,” he grumbled. He loved Natasha and Clint dearly but he also loved them _separately_ ; the idea that they spent any time at all mashing their bits and pieces together made him feel a little unsettled and a little nauseous.

Clint snorted. “Please, I’m calling bullshit on that,” he declared. Turning around, he patted his own backside. “Can’t tell me you wouldn’t jump at a chance to get a piece of this ass!”

Stretched out on his back on Clint’s leather couch, Bucky threw a tennis ball into the air and caught it abley, over and over again, and laughed.

“Tasha’d skin me alive if I so much as _looked_ at that ass,” he replied.

Clint smiled dreamily. “Yeah,” he agreed, retrieving a mug of coffee from the long counter that separated his kitchen from the living room. “She’s a terrifying woman.”

Bucky laughed again. “She’s your girlfriend,” he reminded.

“I’m one lucky son of a bitch,” Clint replied, still smiling.

“Obviously,” Bucky agreed, then tossed the tennis ball towards the door. A scruffy brown dog shot out from behind the couch and ran for it, yipping happily as he went. He brought it back to Bucky, tail wagging so hard that his whole body wiggled, and Bucky smiled as he gave the dog a good scratch behind the ears. “Now have you got any ideas? We got two days to get the next episode recorded and posted and so far, we got bubkus.”

They had embarked on their podcast venture together only four months prior, a late night flash of brilliance they’d had after some internet article about how boring it was in Brooklyn that had sent Bucky into a hometown rage. Clint was a transplant but had come to love his adopted him, and over a few rounds of beer and bullshitting, they’d had a flash of genius: Brooklyn for Brooklyn, a podcast highlighting the best places Brooklyn had to offer, from night life to dining to history and beyond. They posted weekly to an ever growing audience who enjoyed not only the information and stories they shared, but also the banter between the two. They recorded together in Clint’s office after having sought out a new place to experience, but that week, they had come up empty.

“I thought we were skipping this week!” Clint exclaimed, flopping into a worn armchair. As soon as he was seated, the dog, who was far too large to be a lapdog, immediately abandoned Bucky to jump and join Clint in the chair. 

“Lucky, you traitor!” Bucky grumbled.

“Traitor, what? He’s _my_ dog!” Clint retorted, maneuvering about in the chair to keep Lucky’s legs and elbows out of his more sensitive areas.

Bucky snorted. “Unless I got a pizza,” he reminded. The dog’s head lifted at the word, but not scenting any grease or cheese in the air, he soon settled.

“We could do a second review of that pizza joint from last month,” Clint suggested, snapping his fingers as the thought came to him. “Heard they changed things up a bit after we posted about them.”

Bucky groaned. “Isn’t it a little early on for us to be doing reruns? Shit, Clint, it was your turn to come up with an idea.”

“I thought we were skipping!” Clint repeated, annoyed. “Because _somebody_ was s’posed to have a date last night that _should_ have gone well enough that he wouldn’t be around to record today.”

“Wouldn’t be around to…? Jesus, Clint, I’m not that easy,” Bucky grumbled, then sighed. Natasha and Clint had been on him for months now to get back into the dating game. They didn’t even understand why he’d had to end things with Jack.

 

For almost all of his life, Bucky felt like something was missing. He had something he was meant to do, something he was meant to _be_ , but what exactly it was had escaped him. He voiced it rarely but when he did, it was always met with shrugs and smiles and assertions that ‘that’s how everyone feels when they are young’, but Bucky never believed them. 

It only got worse as he got older, even worse when he started dating. His parents had been shockingly understanding when he’d come out as bisexual in his early twenties, though his father had been a little confused.

“What the hell is that now?” he had asked, frowning over his plate of beef stew at the dinner table.

Bucky’s mother had clicked her tongue. “It means he likes girls _and_ boys, George,” she admonished, passing him a piece of freshly buttered bread.

George nodded. “Well, good,” he declared. “Means you have twice the chance of not bringing home a moron like your sister did.”

“Hey!” Becca, Bucky’s younger sister, had protested, and Bucky snorted.

“Believe me, Pop, I got much better taste in men than she does,” he said with a laugh, and even his mother had to hide a smile.

“I should god damn well hope so,” George grumbled, and that was the end of that.

So when Bucky tried to explain it again -- that he had a missing piece, that there was something amiss, that there was something he should have done by now -- it was just brushed off as being lonely. He was in his early thirties now, a time when he’d be expected to settle down, but he couldn’t sustain a relationship for more than a year.

Something always felt _off_.

Clint and Natasha had tried to set him up with a woman that Natasha worked with, Lillian. She was friendly, smart and funny, and a knockout on top of it, but even she knew it wasn’t working as their dinner date wore on.

“I’m glad I met you, Bucky,” she said over dessert. “I think we will be good friends.”

Bucky had smiled and agreed, noting that she had made a point to call him a friend, to punctuate the fact that it wasn’t a love match in the slightest. He was glad of that; he would like to spend time with her in the future, but didn’t want it to be under false pretenses.

That had been the topic of conversation that had caused Bucky to start swearing at Clint in Russian; he was already counting down a list of other men and women to introduced Bucky to, falling into the same trap that so many happy and in love couples did, desperate somehow to share the happiness they had found by forcing their friends into their own long-term romances.

Or at least just trying to form another couple for dinner parties and bowling.

 

“Drop it, Barton,” Bucky said with a glare. “We got work to do, so come up with some ideas and stop bitching about my love life.”

Clint rolled his eyes, scratching Lucky’s belly so that the dog closed his eyes and leaned his head back, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.

“What love life?” he mumbled, earning another glare. Suddenly, Clint’s eyes lit up: he had an idea. A _perfect_ idea. “I got it!” he declared. “We’ll go see the Witch.”

 

Steve sighed down at his cup of coffee, watching a curl of steam rise into the air from the cup. He’d been drinking it black for most of his life but his impatience as of late was leading him to drop in a bit of milk or cream to cool it down more quickly. He was contemplating doing just that when the little ceramic dish of single-serve creamer cups was pushed his way from across the table.

“Don’t go burning your tongue again,” Natasha advised dryly, and Steve had to chuckle. He’d burned of a layer of taste buds on too-hot office swill just the week before at a faculty meeting. 

Steve chuckled. “Am I that easy to read, Nat?” he asked.  
The redhead across the table gave a curt nod. “Like an open book, Rogers. Most of the time.”

They two had an odd friendship, based primarily in proximity, as they worked at the same private school in Manhattan, but partially in Natasha’s fascination in the man. 

Steve Rogers taught seventh and eighth grade history at the prestigious private school where they both worked, Steve, obviously, as part of the teaching faculty, and Natasha as the student affairs administrator for the middle school. Each had a reputation for being tough as nails; Steve’s classes were considered advanced placement and he expected nothing short of the best from his students. He knew they had all worked hard to get where they were and he wanted them to keep up the effort as they moved on to high school and, with luck, early graduation and admission to a good university. He was fair, but firm; there were rules to be followed and he wasn’t shy about doling out punishment when they were broken.

Natasha was much the same, but it was more expected of her job description. She handled detention assignments and the demerit system at the school, monitored tardiness and truancy, and kept careful watch of the strict code of conduct rules that every student was meant to abide by. She considered their attendance at the school a privilege, and was quick to mete out punishment upon those who took it for granted. She knew that Steve came from a military background and had expected him to take such a hardline with his students, but what surprised her were the hours he put in with the children in the elementary portion of the school.

Strict, straightlaced Steve, with his neatly combed hair, trimmed beard and thick dark glasses would spend his afternoon with his sleeves rolled up and his glasses perched atop his head, elbow deep in finger paints and modeling clay and papier-mâché. He spent his mornings teaching in-depth American history, only to leave behind the maps and textbooks to engage in art therapy with the younger children.

It was a dichotomy that Natasha found intriguing, particularly when she called in a few favors to get a peek at Steve’s military record, only to find he’d been considered a reckless pain-in-the-ass by every commanding officer he’d ever had, each of whom would also begrudgingly go on to recommend him for medals and positions. He’d earned an honourable discharge at the rank of Captain, and if some of the heavily redacted documents she’d found were to be believed, he’d been eyeball deep in black ops and harsh battlefield conditions before he’d given it all up -- something she could easily reconcile with his teaching methods but not so much with the afternoon art forays.

She hadn’t been secretive about it; she told him what she had done, looking into his past, and asked where the interest in art came from.

Steve had laughed and shrugged. “I like kids. And I guess I just have a creative impulse?” he offered, and went on to share some surprisingly well defined photographs he’d taken during his multiple tours of duty.

 

That had more or less cemented their friendship; maybe someone like Steve, with a reputation of both a hardened soldier and kindly art teacher, meant that she wasn’t completely strange for her own sometimes cold, blank exterior that hid an inner softness that few had ever seen.

Better still, they got on like a house on fire. Which was why Natasha was not afraid to be brutally honest with him.

“You’re an idiot,” she announced over their late brunch table. “Soulmates do not exist.”

Steve smiled. “Tell that to Clint,” he countered. “He’ll tell anyone who’ll listen for more than five minutes that you’re the love of his life and he’s the luckiest man on earth.”

Natasha huffed and rolled her eyes. “Love is for children,” she declared, not for the first time. 

“Sure it is,” Steve agreed, still smiling as he took a sip of his considerable cooled coffee. “In any event, it’s over with Sam, before it even started. He’s a great guy and I’m glad I have him as a friend, but there’s no spark.”

“You really need to get over this whole ‘soulmate’ thing,” Natasha reminded, taking a sip from her own cup of coffee. “You’re buying into the whole corporate diamonds-and-valentines schtick, Steve. You don’t meet someone and immediately fall into the perfect relationship. You have to work at it, make do with what you have.”

“Didn’t Clint move in with you after three days?” Steve reminded, trying to keep the amusement off of his face and failing miserably as he spoke.

She huffed again. “Extenuating circumstances. His apartment building burned down.”

“From him trying to make you a full Thanksgiving dinner two days after you met,” Steve told her. “Because you were spending the holiday with him, two days after you met.”

Natasha pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. “This is not about me,” she reminded. “This is about you. And your constant running away from commitment and blaming this goofy idea that you have a soulmate…”

“It’s not a goofy idea!” Steve exclaimed. “Plenty of people believe in soulmates, Nat, and I… I just _know_ , okay? There’s someone out there I’m supposed to find. Like I have… like there’s a promise we need to keep. When I find him, I’ll know.”

Slugging back the rest of her coffee, Natasha stood. “C’mon, let’s go,” she told him, and paused to wipe her mouth with a paper napkin, staining it with her perfect berry-colored lipstick. “I can prove it to you. No such thing as soulmates.”

Steve threw some cash on the table and stood, sliding his leather messenger bag over his shoulder. They had paid the bill over an hour ago and just gotten caught up in their chatting.

“Where are we going?” he asked curiously.

Natasha gave him a grin that was almost frightening. “We’re going to see the Witch.”

 

The Scarlet Witch had a small storefront in Brooklyn, not far from the apartment that Clint shared with Natasha. The witch -- Wanda, by name -- kept the windows completely blackened save for one centrala pane, which had a reverse glass painting announcing all of her wares, in tones of white, grey, and bright scarlet.

The Scarlet Witch  
Ouija, Seances, & Tarot  
Spells & Charms  
Soulmates & Past Lives

“Uh… Natasha?” Steve asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow as they approached. “Are you taking me to see some rip-off artist?”

“Absolutely not,” Natasha replied, sounding a mite offended at even the implication. “Wanda is a professional. I can guarantee you that she believes everything she is going to tell you.”

“But you don’t,” Steve filled in, and Natasha snorted, pausing as they reached the door.

“I believe that Wanda tells sweet little stories that can make people very happy,” she told Steve in a very matter-of-fact manner. “I believe they are also just vague enough that people can fill in the blanks and come to believe that she predicted the truth with her potions and seances and playing cards.”

“And how does this prove to me that soulmates don’t exist?” Steve pressed, and Natasha smiled.

“You’re an intelligent man, Steve. You read people remarkably well. You’ll be able to spot the way Natasha picks up on your tics and mannerisms to tell you what you want to hear,” Natasha explained, crossing her arms over her chest.

Steve mimicked the gesture. “I thought you said she’s on the level?” he asked. 

“Oh, she is,” Natasha agreed. “I don’t think she has any idea that she’s doing a cold read on people who come in -- I think she honestly believes she’s a witch. But you’ll see.”

“How did you even find…” Steve began, only to be interrupted by a cell phone ringing, a short shrill tone that was as plain and nondescript as possible that sounded every three or four seconds. Natasha rolled her eyes and pulled it out of the pocket of her jacker, frowning at reading the name on the display.

“Clint, I thought you and Bucky had a playdate today?” she said by way of answering.

Clint laughed, speaking loud enough that Steve could hear him. “We do. But Wanda says we’ve waited for you to come in long enough, so just get your asses in here.”

Natasha rolled her eyes and thumbed off the phone, shaking her head when she spotted Steve’s amused expression.

“She probably has a camera out here or something,” Natasha grumbled, and reached for the door handle.

Smiling, Steve shoved his hands in his pockets and followed her inside. “Sure she does, Nat.”


	6. Chapter 6

Wanda’s reading room was cozy and warm. Plush draperies in shades of crimson and black hung along the walls and there was incense burning somewhere with a light, clean floral scent that made Bucky feel a little drowsy and relaxed. At the center of the room was a round wooden table covered in a silky purple cloth, surrounded by six chairs with cushions in the same fabric.

“Please, sit, sit, sit!” Wanda told them, gesturing towards the chairs. She surveyed the table a moment before taking one chair and pulling it away to deposit it in the corner. “We won’t be needing that one,” she declared with an enigmatic smile.

She stood behind the chair at the head of the table, gesturing for the men to take their seats; they had stalled in the movements when she began moving furniture, only stepping back to the table at her insistence. Bucky took the chair to the left of where she stood, and when Clint moved to take the open seat on her right, she shook her head.

“No, Clint, sit next to your friend, please,” she directed. “That seat is reserved for someone else.”

“Who else?” Bucky asked, frowning. “We interruptin’ some plans here? We can always schedule the interview for another day…”

Wanda laughed, a soft, musical sound. “You _are_ my plans,” she told him, and retreated towards an open doorway covered with a beaded curtain. “Let me just get a few things while we wait for the others.”

Bucky turned and glared at Clint. “What is this? Did you set this up?”

Clint raised to hands in the air in surrender. “Don’t look at me, man. The Witch s good at what she does, that’s all! Probably knows more than we do, anyway.”

“What the hell does that even mean?” Bucky hissed, giving Clint a sharp elbow to the ribs. “I thought we were going to interview her for the podcast, not try to talk to our dead grandparents or something!”

“Aww, why not?” Clint replied, sounding disappointed. “Your Bubbe was awesome.”

“Of _course_ Bubbe Leah was awesome,” Bucky said, as if it was obvious. “That’s not the point. _We_ have a job to do here, not play ouija with Sabrina in there!”

“Oh, I love that show!” Wanda breathed, coming back carrying a ceramic teapot with a wooden handle and a small blue kitchen towel. The scent coming from it wasn’t exactly tea-like, but carried enough notes of it as not to get Bucky overly concerned. She folded the towel on the table and set the teapot upon it before turning towards a small corner cupboard that Bucky hadn’t even noticed. “But no, James -- can I call you James? Or do you prefer Bucky? -- there will be no spirit boards this afternoon.”

She returned to the table with five white ceramic cups; Bucky assumed they were tea cups, though they were very small and had no handles. Wanda placed one before each chair at the table, and then took her seat.

“I… Bucky’s fine… or James… either,” Bucky said, stumbling a little over his words. The clean floral scent seemed to be getting stronger and he was getting confused. He wanted to be angry and suspicious but his body was relaxed, seemingly telling him that he could be at ease.

Wanda smiled at him, gentle and sweet, and reached out to pat his hand where it sat on the tabletop.

“You don’t have to be so nervous,” she told him earnestly. “I only want to help. I can promise you, no harm will come to you here. I think… I think perhaps you’ve been waiting for this day much longer than you realize.”

Bucky’s vision swam; for a strange moment he could swear he was outside, somewhere in the cold, in the mud, the air scented thick with gunpowder and blood. He shook his head and it went away, leaving only Wanda’s smiling face.

She was lovely, he realized, though quite young. He wasn’t sure she could be any more than twenty, with long flowing hair and large, expressive eyes. He could understand why she billed herself as a witch; there was something ethereal about her, something otherwordly.

She laughed softly, gaze never leaving Bucky’s face. “Clint,” she said, “Please call Natasha and ask her and her friend to come inside, so we can start.”

 

Steve almost stumbled as they walked in the door. It was strange, but for a moment there his body felt all wrong. He moved as though he expected his footsteps to be light and awkward, his back curved and his body small, folded in on itself. He had to stop and shaking his head, trying to clear the cobwebs; he’d been like that once, small and thin, when he was a sickly child. The illnesses that had plagued him in his youth had long since dissipated, leaving him with only a rescue inhaler in his back pocket that he rarely used and the occasional bout of hay fever.

“Problem?” Natasha asked, regarding him with one elegantly spiked eyebrow.

Steve took a deep breath and shook his head. “No, no… I just… I’m fine.”

“We’re back here, Tash!” a voice called, and much as Natasha rolled her eyes, Steve could see the tiny smirk forming on her lips.

He’d met Natasha’s long-term paramour only once or twice and, in all honesty, Steve hadn’t understood it at first. Clint was open and gregarious to the point of being a little bit goofy; Steve didn’t see where the attraction could lie, not for either of them. But then he began to notice the tiny smiles and softness to her eyes when Natasha spoke about him, even if she was huffing her way through another story of one of the many scrapes he’d gotten himself into.

Then last year, there’d been a derailment of a subway train, on a line that Clint used everyday to get to his occasional job as a security guard. It had been bad. When they’d heard the news on the radio in the teacher’s lounge, Natasha had gone white as a ghost; it was over an hour before she was able to get Clint on the phone, doped up as he was on painkillers for the arm he had broken in busting out a window to get other passengers to an emergency exit in the tunnel. Steve had cancelled his afternoon art lessons, not wanting to leave her; he politely pretended he didn’t hear her retching in relief in the restroom of her office.

Maybe he didn’t understand why they worked so well, but they did. In all truth, Steve was a little jealous; he’d always wanted something like that. He had just never been able to find it.

 

Natasha led the way towards a door in the back of the waiting area; clearly, she had been here before. Steve followed just behind, finding three people waiting in the reading room beyond the door. He had a brief moment of internal panic, the floral scent to the air causing an automatic reaction to reach for his inhaler, but he paused when he realized his chest wasn’t tightening and his sinuses weren’t starting to swell. There was a hint of freshness about the aroma, a crisp cleanness combined with the floral that made him want to breathe deep and relax. 

“Welcome!” a slip of a girl with long flowing hair and a bright, dreamy smile called out. She was seated at the round table in the center of the room, two men flanking sides. Steve recognized Clint instantly, nodding in polite response to his wave and grin of greeting. The other, he didn’t know at all.

Or did he? _Did_ he?

There was something instantaneously familiar about the man’s dark hair and sharp cheekbones, a sort of inbred intimacy that Steve didn’t quite understand. Even his eyes seemed to resonate, a shade of blue so unlike any other he’d encountered that Steve wondered if it was unique to this man alone.

His hand reached absently to his leather messenger bag, suddenly wishing he had his camera with him to capture the moment.

“Uh… hey Nat,” the man said slowly, eyes seeming to study Steve rather than flick to the woman he was addressing. “Who… uh, who’s your friend?”

“Do I know you?” Steve suddenly blurted, frowning. 

The girl at the table interrupted before the man could respond. “Please, sit!” she called. “Steven, please, you sit here,” she went on, and patted the chair next to her; it would put him directly across from Clint’s friend. “And Natasha, you beside him, there you are. Once we’re all seated, we can start.”

“Start what?” Natasha asked, even as she took her seat.

The little witch smiled. “You’ll see.”

 

Wanda busied herself pouring tea into each cup on the tabletop. She smiled and hummed softly as she did; it had been a long while since she’d been able to do anything like this, and it always lifted her spirits, especially when it worked out so perfectly.

“I am very lucky,” Wanda said as she poured. “I love the work I do, even though sometimes it can be quite sad. But for every sad day, I still get days like today. These are some of the very best.”

Bucky chuckled a little nervously. “You that riled up about a podcast interview?” he asked.

“Oh! You’re Clint’s friend?” Steve asked, his sudden exclamation seeming so loud in the quiet little room that he flushed in embarrassment, dropping his voice intentionally when he spoke again. “I mean… the podcast… thing. That Clint does. I knew he had a partner? So that… that must be you…”

Bucky arched an eyebrow. “Uh, yeah, that’s me. You a friend of Tasha’s?”

“Tasha?” Steve echoed. He’d thought that particular diminutive was reserved for Clint and Clint alone, not realizing that Natasha would allow others to use it.

“I use my full name professionally, Steve,” Natasha cut in, reading the confusion on his face. “Even in academic circles, people feel it necessary to use nicknames, and I just decided not to fight it.” Noting the suddenly hurt expression that came across Steve’s features, she added, “But you’re a friend. You can call me whatever you’re comfortable with, I don’t mind.”

Wanda hummed. “Names are important,” she mused. “It’s funny, the way we attach different meanings. Bucky or James, for example.”

“Jamie,” Steve muttered, surprising even himself.

Wanda beamed. “Yes,” she agreed. “Or Steve, or Steven, or…”

“Stevie?” Bucky suggested. He’d never been called _Jamie_ in his entire life, not even once, but hearing the name come from the blond man across the table had felt like a punch right to the gut. The physical way Steve had seemed shock to hear Bucky respond with _Stevie_ made him certain that he’d felt the same. 

Clint had planted his elbows on the table and was resting his chin in his hands, watching the entire affair with cheerful little smile lighting up his face. It felt like he knew something Bucky didn’t -- something terribly important. He shot Clint a questioning look, and Clint’s smile only grew.

“Wanda is phenomenal,” he said happily. “She just… she just _knows_ things. Like, things happen for a reason, man. Us being here today, it’s for a _reason_.”

Steve couldn’t help the small laugh that escaped him at Clint’s antics; it would figure that Clint would differ so greatly from Natasha, even in this respect.

“Somethin’ funny?” Bucky asked, gaze returning to his counterpart across the table.

Steve shrugged. “He’s just so different,” he said, gesturing towards Clint with one hand. “From Nat, I mean. He’s a full-on believer, and she…”

“Brought you here to prove to you I am a fake, yes?” Wanda asked, completely nonplussed.

“Oh, I didn’t… I didn’t mean…” Steve sputtered, afraid he had offended the witch.

She shook her head. “Not to worry,” she told him. “I know well of _Natalia’s_ skepticism, and that is fine. It is very easy to pretend soulmates can’t exist when you’ve already found yours.”

Natasha huffed and forcefully rolled her eyes, but to Steve’s surprise, he could see that even in the low light of the reading room, she was blushing.


	7. Chapter 7

“It’s strange, your friendships,” Wanda mused. With everyone situated where she wanted them, she began to putter around the room, gathering her supplies. There were candles and stones, glittering crystals she began placing in an intricate pattern on the tabletop.

“Why’s that?” Natasha asked, a slow smirk on her face. “Clint is a human disaster and Bucky is too lazy to find better friends.”

Clint snorted. “And Steve can’t seem to remember he’s not in the army’s special ops anymore, so of course he’d be besties with a former government agent,” he added.

Steve and Bucky looked suddenly started. “What?” they asked, both at once. There was the distinctive sound of a stylish ladies chunky heeled boot stomping on a ragged Chuck Taylor sneaker beneath the table.

Clint grimaced. “Nothing!” he said, voice strained and pitched a little higher than usual.

Wanda shook her head. “Our souls tend to gravitate towards one another, over and over again,” she explained, setting out her candles and ignoring Clint’s continual frowning down at his feet. “Family remains family, perhaps arranged a little different, but often in the same roles. We love the same people, time and again.”

She began lighting her candles and glanced to Natasha. “You and Clint… you have very old souls,” she explained.

Clint seemed to forget his pain, and grinned. “We were vikings!” he announced proudly. Natasha rolled her eyes, but said nothing.

“But you two,” Wanda continued, glancing between Bucky and Steve as she addressed them, “You are very young souls, perhaps a century, perhaps a little longer, but certainly not much more.”

“Aww,” Bucky said, regaining a little of his usual swagger. “Y’here that, punk? We’re cosmic newborns or somethin’.”

Steve snorted. “Whatever you say, jerk,” he replied, and they chuckled together in a sweet moment of strange familiarity before their faces both fell into shock.

Natasha’s eyes narrowed. “Have you two met?” she asked, glancing between the two.

“No, I don’t think we…” Steve started, then squinted, head cocked to the side. “But have we? There’s something I can’t quite…”

Bucky nodded, feeling a little foolish but unable to escape the same strange sense of familiarity. “Not that I can remember but you’re right, it’s like it’s just… just there, on the tip of my tongue…”

Clint grinned. “Oh, I’m sure you’d _love_ havin’ Steve on the tip of your…” He cut himself off with a grunt, following a very familiar stomp. “Jeez, Tasha, I was just teasin’...”

“And yet the four of you found each other this way,” Wanda mused, and smiled as she took her seat. “More than once, I’m certain. But we’ll all know shortly. Please, drink your tea.”

“Oh…” Steve said, picking up the small china cup. Bucky had to suppress a small smile at how silly it looked in his massive hand. “What kind of tea?” Steve went on. “I have…”

“It will not affect your allergies,” Wanda reassured him, before he could explain.

“Oh,” Steve repeated faintly. “Thank you for, um, letting me know.”

 

Bucky bit back a small smile. He understood Natasha’s friendship with Steve a little better to see the man go red in the face, confused and a little embarrassed by his whole exchange with Wanda. He was as much of a mess as Clint -- and, loathe as he was to admit it, Bucky himself.

Perhaps that was Natasha’s lot in life, to collect a cadre of disaster-humans, making herself look even better by proximity.

The familiarity though… that was distracting. Bucky knew that they hadn’t met before; he’d _remember_ if they had. Steve was… Bucky would be remiss to just mentally tag him as handsome and leave it at that. The blond hair swept back from his face, the luxurious darker beard, piercing blue eyes… not to mention a body built for some serious athletics, hidden away beneath khakis and a navy sweater. Add in a pair of black-rimmed glasses and he was pinging every naughty professor fantasy that Bucky didn’t even know he _had_. But it was more than that.

Bucky could see him as he sat there across the table, but he could see him… _outside_. Outside of the room, of the city… outside of time. Steve clean-shaven with neatly swept back hair, glasses with wire frames and a large, heavy camera at his side. Steve small and wirely, pale and a little gaunt with a nasty cold, tucked into a rickety old cot, a worn blanket pulled up to his chin. Steve tall and broad-shouldered, dog tags glinting against his bare chest, covered in a thin sheen of sweat and surrounded by dense foliage.

He was different, but the same. Same face, same eyes. Different places. And when he looked at Bucky, when their eyes would meet, when their fingers brushed against one another… that? That was always the same. 

It was electric. It was perfection. It was… it was a _promise_. Bucky wish he understood what it could all mean.

 

“What is it we’re all drinking here?” Clint questioned, grimacing slightly after downing the cup of tea that had been in front of him. At first it seemed overly sweet, and then bitter; it definitely had an herbal flavor but it wasn’t anything he could put his finger on.

“Blue lotus,” Wanda told him. “Lavender. Lemon. Gingko. Star anise. Valerian. And a little black tea. It helps ease the consciousness, opens it up to deeper remembrance.”

Clint frowned. “None of that is gonna mess with a piss test at work, is it?” he asked.

“You and Lang shared a joint on your front porch stoop _last night_ ,” Bucky reminded, shaking his head. He could taste a few of the ingredients Wanda had listed, most notably the star anise; it left a bitter, licorice taste in the back of his throat, reminding him vaguely of the sambuca shots he used to toss back in college.

“Yeah, but Stark doesn’t care about the pot,” Clint pointed out. “Just the hard stuff.”

“ _I_ care about the pot,” Natasha told him with a glare, another under-the-table foot-stomp punctuating her words.

Wanda shook her head, muttering something in what sounded like Sokovian, before sighing. “Please, pay attention. The tea is not cheap and I’d hate to have to brew another pot because of the bickering, yes?”

 

Steve was _trying_ to pay attention, really he was. It was just difficult, with Bucky sitting there across the table, staring right back at him. It felt a little like looking in a mirror, strangely; the sheer recognition was so strong and deep that Steve felt like he was drowning. And the even stranger part of all of it was… he didn’t care. It wasn’t scary. It wasn’t awkward or claustrophobic, as he often felt when meeting new people. It was easy, and sweet. Steve felt open and light for the first time in a very, very long while.

Natasha sensed it. She had known him first as the brusque former military man, the teacher who ran his class like a drill sergeant, fair but still firm. She had seen that hardness lessen around her as they grew close and became more friends than colleagues. But this… the openness in his expression, the quiet interest in his eyes… _this_ , she hadn’t seen before. Steve knew she was watching him, shooting curious glances his way.

But he didn’t care -- he _couldn’t_ care, not when Bucky was sitting there, watching with with wide, questioning eyes.

Steve blinked once or twice, wondering if his eyes were playing tricks on him. The tea had tasted strange but it made him feel loose and a little dozy. He could see Bucky sitting there, dark hair reaching past his collar, stubble on his cheeks, skin bearing the last vestiges of the touch of the summer sun that faded into chilly fall weather only weeks before… but he could see him _differently_.

Well-groomed and gentlemanly, a handlebar mustache beneath a Brodie helmet. White t-shirt and a leather jacket, an easy smile with bar rag in his hand. Young and too thin, remnants of a black eye and wearing a prison-issue denim shirt. They were Bucky, but not Bucky; each one had a different name, a different story. But they were him, they were always him… and he was always Steve’s.

They didn’t see the soft, perfumed tendrils of scarlet drifting through the air around them. Bucky and Steve breathed them in, each feeling more and more relaxed, barely hearing the soft words that Wanda was whispering around them, or noticing that Clint and Natasha had fallen into some kind of gentle slumber. 

Their eyes met over the table, two different shades of blue lit by flickering candlelight, widening as a rush of warm air filled the small room and the little witch smiled softly.

“Oh,” she said in a small, pleased voice. “It’s all coming back.”


End file.
